I have a Janome 300E that I bought from someone local used on $600 2 years ago and it works fine. you an put up to a 5 x 7 hoop on it and it you purchase the giga hoop you can embroider a larger size by doing each half at a time. I use it a lot and have had no problems at all. the 300E is the older model replaced by the 350 E. Once and awhile i have seen new 300Es at Hancock Fabrics for $899.
The 300E goes for about $999 on ebay, so the price appears to be right and you can always go back to the dealer and make a nusiance of yourself if you have problems and they won't fix them.
The 300E takes a PMCIA card with a compact flash inserted. you can easily download designs from your laptop to the compact flash and then insert them in the machine. I only load onto the compact flash what I want to sew out to keep the load time on the machine down, and keep my source files on the pc well backed up.
the 350E reads a flash drive = thumb drive instead.
The 350 E doesn't handle an larger hoops than the 300E